


Into the Black

by uaigneach



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid
Genre: Angst, Autistic Hannah Foster, Ethan knows who Webbie is, F/M, Hurt Ethan, The Black and White (Black Friday), will probably add more tags later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23387455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uaigneach/pseuds/uaigneach
Summary: What if the Foster sisters weren't the only ones with the so-called 'special abilities'? What if Ethan had been able to see it too?[A retelling of Black Friday from Ethan's perspective with my own personal headcanons included]
Relationships: Ethan Green & Hannah Foster, Ethan Green & Henry Hidgens, Lex Foster/Ethan Green
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Into the Black

Ethan Green had had a bad feeling about today. 

It wasn’t exactly odd for Ethan to have a bad feeling — tragedy seemed to hang around Hatchetfield like an ever persistent fog. There was just no end to the bad things that happened. But then again, wasn’t that just how life was?

Most people had bad feelings about days and things, but usually, nothing became of it. Not for Ethan though. Ethan was always right. 

He’d had a bad feeling when Lex had failed out of high school and when the Houston family had been in that car crash. He’d had a bad feeling the day that his Uncle Henry had had a lab accident and lost all of his friends. He’d had a bad feeling when his brother had been killed too.

Ethan had learned to trust his instincts, even if sometimes his brain could be behind things. He was 16, and a guy. He was allowed to be a little stupid sometimes. 

Today was going to be a bad day, but in all honesty, he just couldn’t figure out how. Everything was going so well — and maybe that was the problem. 

He’d found a buyer who was willing to pay 7 thousand dollars for that damn doll. That was more than enough for them to make it to California like Lex wanted. Her mom was neglectful, and Ethan could understand why she wanted to get her sister out of there. 

A fresh start; it was what they needed. 

Sure… Ethan would still need to finish school, but he could always just get his G.E.D. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. But… he’d have to leave his Uncle Henry all alone in this miserable town. The man was kind of insane, but he’d taken him in in the after. Ethan could never repay him for that. 

Maybe he could just tell him that he was going off to college. It wasn’t like Henry would check. He was a caring man, but he was entirely focused on his work with the community college and his own experiments. Sometimes it felt like he considered one of his students — Emma, if Ethan remembered correctly — more of a close family relation than Ethan. Emma was a nice girl; her boyfriend was a bit weird but he made her happy. 

But Ethan just didn’t want to be left behind when Lex left. He was going to do his best to make sure that her and Hannah could get to have their fresh start, even if he wasn’t all that smart. 

Black Friday and the Tickle-Me Wiggly was their best shot. So he supported Lex. 

He picked up Hannah — who was in an utterly fabulous mood — and headed over to Toy Zone at the literal ass-crack of dawn. 

“Mall security! We got a shoplifter—drop that doll!” He yelled jokingly, laughing when Lex shrieked in surprise before hugging him. 

“Jesus Christ! Oh my god, Ethan. You fucking asshole!” He wanted to be able to say that her laugh was like bell chimes, but it just wasn’t. That didn’t mean that he didn’t love it any less though. She sounded like a surprised pig, but the way that her entire face scrunched up with joy made the tightness of his lungs loosen. 

“C’mon, it was just a goof.”

Lex shook her head teasingly, letting him go and looking around, a frown beginning to settle across her features. “Where’s my sister?”

He paused for dramatic effect, widening his eyes. “Oh no,” he whispered. “Hannah? Is that what you’ve been telling me every day for the past 4 weeks? To pick up your kid sister?” He gripped her arms dramatically, wailing and making it generally apparent that he was joking. “Oh, I must’ve forgot ‘cause I’m so stupid.” 

(Sometimes it irked him that she thought he was dumb. After all, he was the one who was still in high school. Sure, it wasn’t with straight A’s but he knew how to spell and remember basic things, thank you very much.)

(It’s just… everyone expected him to be stupid. Everyone assumed. His teachers tried to catch him for cheating, but if he was cheating and only getting the grades he was then that was far from worth pursuing.)

(Lex… Lex didn’t know that he still attended high school. He ditched a lot, and he had a co-op class to make some money and to work. It… it was enough that she didn’t know. She never asked. She just assumed that he dropped out when she had. It was easier for her to just keep thinking that he was stupid. He figured that she wouldn’t leave him behind if he was kind of pathetic. No one wanted to kick a hurt puppy.)

“She’s right over here, but uh… I’ve gotta warn ya. She’s being a little snot today.” He turned around to yell into an adjoining alleyway. “HANNAH! Come here!” He grabbed her arm, nudging her along and towards Lex. “Man, do I gotta put a leash on ya? Like a dog? Or my cousin Oliver?” He muttered. 

He didn’t even have a cousin named Oliver. Or well, he didn’t exactly know if he did. It seemed silly, but ever since he was a kid he just… said things. It wasn’t like he was trying to lie all the time. No one ever asked him if it was true or not. No one cared. His Uncle Henry wasn’t there enough to think that even the wildest things he said were false. 

One time, he’d had a nightmare about the apocalypse — this was before he’d learned that when he spoke about the things that he saw, everyone thought he was crazy or brain damaged. He’d told his Uncle about it, and the next day, his Uncle had shown him all of the prep he’d done for doomsday because Uncle Henry had theorized the exact same scenario 13 years before. 

“Don’t pull her!” Lex snapped, looking at him with that look that he knew meant that she thought he was being particularly stupid. 

“I’m not!” he insisted, looking down at the ground and throwing up his hands to show just how much he _wasn’t_ pulling Hannah. His voice cracked embarrassingly and he suppressed the urge to wince aggressively. He liked the little squirt despite the fact that she seemed caught between being pissed at him and looking at him like she could see right through him. Her gaze was both all too young and hundreds of years old. 

Ethan liked to think that he’d once looked like that. Maybe he’d been the same kind of enchanting before… well, everything. He wasn’t any kind of enchanting now. He was just a no-good idiot in a leather jacket that he inherited from a dead man. 

Lex walked over to where Hannah had slumped on the curb. “Hey, Banana!” Lex said, speaking in that special tone of voice that one would usually reserve for a very young child. It was very close to a condescending voice; it was reminiscent of the voice people tried to use with him. Hannah never said anything about it to Lex even though Ethan knew that sometimes it bothered her. Hannah was smart. She knew things. She played up her role because part of her still believed that others would actually believe her 

Ethan wished he could still be like that.

“Is it a good day or a bad day?” Lex continued.

Ethan saw a hint of annoyance flash across through Hannah’s eyes, but it was gone fairly quickly and replaced with a child-like pout. “Bad day.”

Lex smiled, fiddling with her backpack and kneeling down beside her sister. “Well I dunno who told you that, ‘cause today is a good day. You know my backpack?” she wiggled her backpack enticingly in front of her. “The one with the pins on it? Well today, you get to wear it!”

Ethan didn’t really understand why Hannah had to be the one with the backpack. Maybe Lex just wanted Hannah to be involved in them getting the hell out of Hatchetfield.

“No.” 

Ethan wanted to scream just a little bit. “See what I mean? It’s been this, all day.”

Lex just blatantly ignored him and kept going. “Why don’t you wanna wear my backpack? That makes me sad. Do you think that I have a bad backpack?” 

Hannah shook her head. “I’m not supposed to.”

“Who says you’re not supposed to?” Lex pressed. 

“Webbie.”

Ethan froze. Now, that was a name that he had heard multiple times. Increasingly so in the last few months. 

It wasn’t a name that he’d heard for the first time either. 

It had been a while since he’d seen _things_ , but he remembered Webbie. Webbie wasn’t so much an apparition (at least to him) as it was… a voice. Or many voices. It… _they_ were Webbie. They were Webbie. Webbie was always there and always _knew_ things. Webbie told him that his brother was going to die. Ethan hadn’t listened. After the incident, Ethan listened. 

After Lex, Webbie had stopped talking to him, even if he hadn’t stopped seeing things.

“Oh great. Now we gotta talk to the imaginary spider from outer space.” he snapped, off-put by Hannah bringing up Webbie. He’d thought for sure she’d picked up on the fact that he hated the very mention of Webbie. Lex didn’t know about the fact that he knew… about Webbie. 

No one except for Hannah. Hell, even Hannah didn’t know everything. At least, he didn’t think so.

“What does Webbie say?” Lex asked calmly. 

Hannah hugged herself, looking away from Lex. “Bad blood. Cross. Black and White.”

Ethan snorted, although it was entirely bravado at this point. “Woah! Can you translate? I don’t speak Crazy.” 

“She’s not crazy! She’s creative.” Lex insisted, leaning forwards and beginning to wrestle with Hannah in order to put the backpack on her. “ I don’t have all day for this⸺”

“No!” Hannah yelped. 

Having enough of watching Lex struggle to get her sister to take the damn doll, he got up and walked over to the two sisters. “Here, let me try this,” he whispered to Lex. He plastered a smile on his face and turned to look at Hannah even though he knew full well that Hannah could tell that it was fake. 

“Alright, Banana Split. You see this hat?” he began, pulling a crumpled up baseball cap out from his pocket. It was old and had a dark stain along the side. The Hatchetfield Nighthawks logo was embroidered on the front and the back was secured by a clip. All things considered, it was in great condition despite the look of it. 

“This was gifted to me by a great warrior.” he continued to explain, internally floundering on what to say. 

Technically it was true that it had been given to him by a warrior. It had been his older brother’s hat. He’d died when Ethan was just a kid, but Ethan remembered it like it happened yesterday. That happened sometimes when you experienced a traumatic event. Either way, stuff like watching your entire immediate family die in front of you and being able to do nothing stuck with you. 

It happened on a normal night. His dad had been driving while drunk off his ass as usual. Colin had been in the front because he was old enough to be, much to a younger Ethan’s displeasure. Everything had been completely normal — hell, Colin had been twisted around in his seat to try and calm Ethan down. He’d been crying for some reason that didn’t seem like it was any kind of important now. 

Then out of nowhere, his dad had run right off the road and into a street lamp or something. It had completely caved in the front of the car and even managed to flip them over. Ethan barely remembered that part of the crash, but the minutes after would always haunt him. There hadn’t been anyone else on the streets — on the count of it being so late. His dad had died on impact, but Colin hadn’t been so lucky. 

The dash had pinned his legs down, so even if he hadn’t been severely injured, he wasn’t getting out of the car without a lot of help. He’d smacked his head off the window, and there was a solid wound along the side of his head, dripping blood all over everything. Ethan hadn’t understood the extent of his injuries then, but something was stuck either into his legs or through his stomach, because he was bleeding out everywhere. Ethan had been so scared, and he’d been a sobbing mess. 

He’d crawled across the roof, almost unaware of the broken bits of glass that dug into the soft meat of his palms. Colin must have known that he was dying even if he was out of it. His pupils had been blown and blood coated his teeth. Still, he’d managed to grab his ever present baseball cap and clumsily press it into Ethan’s hand with a weak smile. He’d told Ethan that as long as he had it, everything would be okay, and nothing could harm him. 

Then he’d told him to go; to find some kind of help. Ethan had refused to leave, and he’d sobbed loudly as Colin bled out and stopped breathing. 

  
  


He opened his mouth to continue, swallowing thickly, when Lex’s soft laughter hit his ears. She didn’t know, so he couldn’t blame her, but… it still hurt that she was laughing. “Don’t fuckin’ laugh.” he hissed, turning to look a suitably cowed Lex. She stifled her laughter and pasted a serious look on her face. He turned back to Hannah and waved at the hat in his hands. 

“It’s imbued with the power of grey skull⸺” he stopped, for a second, making eye contact with Hannah. In that moment, there was a weird sort of soul deep intelligence in her eyes. The words which should have been so inconsequential, meant something to her too. She’d seen the hazy skull that flickered behind his eyelids every now and then. “⸺to ward off dark magic, uh, backpacks, bad blood⸺any fucking thing. Now I can lend you this hat just for today,” he transparently tried to manipulate her into taking the hat and the backpack. He knew that she knew; it was painfully obvious that he was ‘talking out of his ass’ and ‘making things up because she’s a child and needs coddling’. 

She was autistic, she wasn’t stupid. 

“And while it’s on your head, well, nothing can harm you.” He could almost hear his own brother’s voice echo over his own. He wondered if Hannah could too. 

She pursed her lips, staring up at him with her impossibly wide eyes. “Honest?” she asked, seemingly playing along with his ‘story’ and also somehow knowing that it wasn’t his words that he was telling her.

He held the hat out. “”Cross my heart. And hope to die.”

He didn’t like how final that sounded.

But Hannah smiled at him and took the hat and backpack so that was all that mattered. Lex really needed this to work and Ethan was doing his part. He just wanted to prove himself to her. It probably wasn’t healthy how much he wanted Lex to love him in the same way that he loved her. 

“I’d make a great dad, just sayin’” he half-jokes as he walks back over to Lex, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Maybe it was too soon to be joking about things like this, but… he wanted a future with Lex. He wanted the house and the picket fence and the dog and the _kids._ He’d always wanted kids, but Hatchetfield was a shit place to raise anything. But if this worked, they’d be in California — which arguably wasn’t the greatest place to be poor in either, but all Lex wanted was to get out of Hatchetfield. 

As per usual, Lex ignored him and took a step away. “Okay, so you’re gonna watch her until I get off at noon and then we’re out of this fucking town. Is everything okay with the buyer?”

Ethan smiled tightly, “oh yeah, about that. There’s been a little complication.” He pointedly ignored Lex’s cursing and continued with yet another red herring. “So originally we talked about five, well uh, word starts to get around and before I know it there’s a bidding war for this thing!” he points emphatically at the backpack containing the little monster that was their ticket to California. “And we got somebody willing to pay seven.”

He watched as Lex’s eyes lit up and he couldn’t wait to tell them the news. “700 for a doll?!” she asked in disbelief. 

“No.” Ethan chuckled in glee. “7000.”

Lex’s eyes practically resembled saucers at this point. “7000?!” she repeated, taking a step away from him. “Seven fucking thousand dollars?” It then became evident why she took a step back because she proceeded to launch herself at him screaming in happiness. “We’re set! We’re set!” she laughed. He swung her around and gleefully set her down on the ground. Lex always looked the most beautiful when she laughed. 

She turned to look at Hannah. “Hannah, do you know what this means?” she asked.

“California?” Hannah asked, her voice tinged with hope. It was almost like she was scared to be excited and that fact broke his heart all over again. 

“Cali-fucking-fornia!”

**Author's Note:**

> lowkey I wanna write something where Ethan was secretly the actor who played Kris Kringle and he was too embarrassed to tell Lex but Hannah knew and that's why he was gonna take her to the movie


End file.
